How to Find Information about Visual Art and Artists

GUIDE 1: How to Find Biographical and General Information

Begin your research by establishing the artist's country/ locality, time period, and style or "school." Information of this sort is found in various art encyclopedias, dictionaries, and biographical dictionaries in the Holland Reference area. You may already have some amount of information that will assist you in your search. Start with the artist's name and/or movement. Finding information on artists of the stature and fame of Michangelo, Van Gogh, or Motherwell poses little problem. For local, regional, avant-garde, or women artists it can be difficult. Here are some sources. There are others in the Reference area. If all else fails, try the Encyclopedia Britannia, and other general biographical tools.

General Biography

Women Artists Biography

Women artists are sometimes included in the general biographical books, but these cover specifically women artists, including lesser-known ones.

GUIDE 2: How to Find Books

When you have basic information about your artist, the next step is to check Griffin for books specifically by or about your artist. The card catalog is of secondary importance because it hasn't been updated since 1980, but it should be checked for older artists. Griffin is the Libraries' computer catalog. You can look for books by author, title, subject or keyword. Cougalog does not contain articles in periodicals. (See Guide 3) If you do not find any books specifically on your artist, look for a book that might include a discussion. Try a book on the art movement your artist belongs to. You need to be ingenious here. You can "make up" a book title that might include information about your artist.

Searching by subject is likely to yield good results. Below is a brief list of some possible subject headings:

While at the terminal explore WorldCat, a vast data bank of books, which we may or may not have. You can get them by Interlibrary Loan.

GUIDE 3: How to Find Journal and Magazine Articles

SERENDIPITY

Serendipity is when you locate a magazine in your subject area and browse through it looking for, or rather, hoping to find, an article on your subject, and you find one! Although browsing is an excellent way to keep up in your field, it is worthless for finding material on a specific subject.

SCHOLARLY

The scholarly method is when you consult a JOURNAL INDEX. Holland Library has journal indexes in hard copy, on CD-ROMs and online. FirstSearch, the on-line system, and instructions for its use, are available on the terminals that house Griffin. Give it a try. Unfortunately, its resources for visual art biography and criticism appear limited. The indexes for which we have CD-ROMs are noted below, as are the hard copy indexes. They are all in the Reference area.

Step 1:

Locate a journal index in your subject area. The subject headings you used for searching Cougalog (See Guide 2) can be used to look up journal articles in the indexes. Look under the name of your artist.

Step 2:

When you find a journal article that interests you, copy all the information given. This information, called a citation, includes the title and author of the article, the title of the journal, the volume, pages and date.

Step 3:

Now you are ready to find your journal. Go to a Griffin terminal. Type in the exact full name of your journal, not the title of the article. When you find your journal title, copy down the call number.

Step 4:

For most journals and magazines, current unbound issues are shelved in the Current Journals/Periodicals section. Older issues of journals are bound, look just like books, and are interfiled with the books by the call number.

Step 5

Locate your journal, either in the "CJ" room or in the book stacks. Find the volume, year and date of your article.

Step 6:

Remember that journal and magazine articles about visual artists usually contain reproductions of their work. You can tell when there are illustrations because the citation will say "illus".

GUIDE 4: How to Find Reproductions of Artists' Works

Sometimes it is necessary to locate a reproduction of a specific piece of art work by a certain artist. In the Reference area there are various indexes to reproductions. Some of them are: These volumes are indexes to a collection of prints owned by Holland Library. They also contain reproductions of other paintings not in the collection. (Some of these prints we have; some we don't. But there's lots of pictures in the books.)
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